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Madison was very active in the affairs of the fledgling nation before being elected to the presidential office. He helped pen the Federalist essays alongside Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, and he also contributed with great enthusiasm to the debates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He later assisted in constructing the Bill of Rights. He and his wife Dolley Payne Todd Madison married in 1794. They had no children together, though Madison helped raise her son from a previous marriage. The couple shared a comfortable and reasonably conflict-free life at Madison's Virginia plantation until his death in 1836.